


Ye Olde Kidnapping Game

by TotleighTowers (orphan_account)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Banter, Derek to the Rescue, Future Fic, Happy ending though, Humor, Incomplete, Kidnapped Stiles, M/M, Oblivious Stiles, Pre-Slash to Slash, Scott As Well, Smitten Derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 16:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14897639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TotleighTowers
Summary: Stiles is kidnapped, alone in a basement, hungry and irritated.Coming to his rescue, Derek is calm and collected, and quite possibly in love.Scott is Scott.





	Ye Olde Kidnapping Game

**Author's Note:**

> This is an incomplete, fragmented - but not altogether incoherent - piece of work. 
> 
> Be warned.

* * *

 

 

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no –”

     “Stiles? Stiles, that you?”

     Why, no, Derek, Stiles thinks acidly, it’s the other person who looks, sounds, smells and panics exactly like the sprightly ball of pure sunshine certain grumpy werewolves have been known to growl at, show a particular affinity for shoving up against walls and bearing down upon tables – made, you understand, to get up close and personal with painfully firm horizontal and vertical surfaces; something Stiles doesn’t think he can overemphasize – or barring aforementioned, otherwise physically and psychologically impair on a semi regular basis, for the past bazillion or so years.

     And Derek, because he has a drum that produced a musical melody superior to any other, is too busy beating it to pay attention to the expression of Gawd-help-us now-we’re-done-for darkening Stiles’ face.

     “Stiles, calm down, okay? I’m fine. Not even bleeding anymore. See?” Derek, oblivious as only he can be, continues, lifting up the tattered and bloody remains of what must have been a perfectly innocent little Henley when the lump of human misery began his day of terrorising the unsuspecting fauna of Beacon Hills, and displaying a set of Adamantium-esque abs with not a sliver of skin nor a string of tendon out of place that causes Stiles to weep in relief for his thankfully normal human adult male body. Just thinking about the kind of maintenance required to keep a figure like Derek’s in tip-top condition, though a fine specimen from a spectator’s point of view, is enough to make him feel grateful that he refused to bite the lycanthrope bullet when the undead uncle of the sadly departed had menacingly offered it.

     Stiles tries to smother down his panic by focusing on righteous indignation of being the right person who was indignant about… stuff and all that sort of thing.

     “It’s been roughly, what, five hours, thirty-seven minutes, give or take,” he says, and impresses himself by how composed he sounds, “since those assholes who couldn’t tell a bunny from a werewolf if it hopped up to them waving a carrot and wriggling its cuter than hell bunny ears, let alone a human, kidnap me in broad daylight of high noon from the crowded parking of a Target – just another of the many and sundry ways in which corporate economy is ruining our lives – so can you explain to me, misjudged detours aside, how in the name of all the furry gods responsible for putting together the flesh and blood blessing that is you, is it possible for you to have not only bumped into them – by accident, of course; the only reason most of us give you a lot of elbow room rather than tear you a new one for proving to be the inevitable centre of most if not all of the shit-storms that have plagued us ever since that damned dead deer fiasco from the days of yore, is that you don’t spend your daylight hours actively searching for trouble with that super-sniffer of yours – but, and again pardon the redundant digression, also  _caught_  by them? How? Are you losing your touch? Your beard isn’t as meticulously trimmed as it used to be, I have noticed. In Derek-speech, that means you are gonna be needing dentures soon, and maybe a subscription to L’Oreal’s anti-aging thingamajig. Don’t hurry to answer or anything. Think about what you want to say very carefully. We’ve got a few hours to kill until the cavalry arrives. Go.”

     Derek gapes at him for an extended moment, face red with confusion and embarrassment, then said in the surly voice of a put upon porcupine – if, you know, porcupines were capable of reproducing human speech and sounded surly when put upon, “Bear with me for a few minutes while I recover from that stunning show of gratitude from you.”

     “Gratitude for what, you blind moron? For you getting caught as well, because of course what I needed in this burning hour of need wasn’t a mounted rescue from my near and dear but a grouchy werewolf with whom I could divide the loneliness of being kidnapped and imprisoned in a stinking, badly lit, disused meth-lab of a basement preparatory to being tortured for information I probably don’t even have? If so, then yeah, my knight in shining armour, I’m glad for the company, stellar it’s going to prove, I’ve no doubt. Talking to dilapidated walls that seem in the process of birthing mutated strains of flesh eating algae from the alternate-beyond can only be so amusing. Who likes freedom? Or unhindered access to fresh air. Not me. No, sir.”

     In his comparatively short and eventful life, Stiles has discovered that in times of acute distress nothing cools him down as swiftly and effectively as a good, long, well-deserved and well-thought out rant against someone who deserves a good, long, well-deserved and well thought out rant for multifarious scrapes they get into by simply being who and what they were. In Derek’s case, the ‘who’ is werewolf and the ‘what’ is dense. The efficacy of this can be adjudged by the picture Derek presents at the moment, scraps of his beloved Henley hanging on his shoulders and chest as though they have been ‘pin-the-tail’-ed at a kids party, and the expression on his face the most bewildered Stiles has ever seen on anyone unfortunate enough to have been on the receiving end of one of his oratorical attacks.

     Calm, however, Stiles does feel now – and, given the state of speechlessness to which he has reduced the mighty scourge of the night, proud.

     “I guess it’s not all thorns and shadows everywhere,” he charitably volunteers, Derek still playing stupidly mum on his end; then again, one can hardly rely on Derek to adhere to ethics of polite conversation at the best of times – not because he is laconic, suffering as he does from a vocabulary that’s composed exclusively of monosyllabic responses, punctuated with variegated shades of animalistic mannerisms, or in possession of a personality which makes people reach pre-emptively for their crosses and prayer-books at the mere sight of him; but because that wolf-man, God help him, is absolutely incapable of not being a disappointment when there’s opportunity for him to be one. “I might get to punch you in your stupid face before the day’s out, and that’s the kind of silver lining Stiles likes. Might make getting kidnapped worth it, that.”

     “What?” says Derek, finally recovering his speech, and looking so very stung that Stiles has to suppress a derisive snort.

     “You know.”

     Stiles waggles his eyebrows meaningfully, but even in the prehistoric lighting of the basement it is very clear that Derek does not, in fact, ‘know’.

     “Come on, dude.”

     Derek, as evident by the continued stiffness of his posture, does not ‘come on’, either.

     “It’s almost a tradition at this point. No? Nothing? Seriously?” Stiles heaves a sad, dramatic sigh, one he isn’t sure isn’t sincere and brimming with heartfelt pity for this saddest of sad sacks in the world. Between a starving three-legged puppy clutching a sign board that read ‘Help Me, Wuf-wuf’ in its tiny muzzle and Derek Hale standing quietly, angrily, forlornly, and helplessly in the ashes of his home and family, a home Stiles has every reason to think had to have been a very happy one, there’s no contest as to whom your heart would soar.

     But a terrible, haunting past does not excuse imbecility of the present, no matter how much of sympathy and leniency one can hope to indemnify against private tragedy. After all, who isn’t miserable in this world? Exchange one loss for another, and the entirety of the human race is gazing alike into the abyss of despair. Stiles lost half of his family, and here he is: kidnapped in a basement which must moonlight as a mausoleum for the especially degenerate, famished to the bone, and with a throbbing headache, and for company a character whose life story is as grim and sad as imagination could conjure or reality allow.

     “You,” he begins in a tone calculated to inspire charm in his auditor, because why not give Derek a run-down of past misadventures now that there’s an opening for it; the guy’s memory clearly isn’t up to par, and Stiles, however he may deny it, is itching with the need to attack someone with all the righteous fury of which he is capable: “the guy who entertains a guilt complex about literally every single horrible thing that has happened to anyone, ever, don’t recall the custom, let’s say, or a ritual, in which we, the teen wolf squad, is battling its weekly crisis, a monster of the week kind of fare, and you somersault your diva way in without a second thought, or a first thought, or any thought, really, and are knocked out cold after what can only be described as a cringe-inducing performance of your abilities – something I’d argue is more excruciating to watch than it is to endure – in the general vicinity of a spastic and sarcastic human, only for you to be brought round by a well placed fist, or four, from yours faithfully. Ring any bells? No? Man. You really need to brush up your guilt complex if it isn’t bothering you for all the horrible things you’ve done to yourself, let alone all the horrible things other people have done to you. Ah,” he added, clasping his hands together and pretending to stare operatically into the dank, dark distance, “the satisfaction of sucker-punching you is always worth the consequent injury.”

     Between one blink of the eye and the next, Derek is up close and personal with Stiles’ face, so much so that his nose brushes against the side of Stiles’ – who, in an attempt to avoid collision and therefore breakage of his most prized money-maker (if Stiles says so himself), hurriedly yanks his head back, his frenzied heart caught in his throat along with his breath.

     Derek, however, is having none of it because he leans in closer still.

     “Far be it from me to deny you…  _satisfaction_  of any kind, Stiles,” he, for the lack of a better or more appropriate word,  _purrs_  into Stiles’ cheek, and Stiles shudders in spite of himself, “but I feel we really must do something about that mouth of yours.” He then presses his nose more firmly into Stiles’ cheek, sighing and whispering, “You know, I really don’t understand how it happens. You are smart. Very smart. More than that, though, you are kind. It’s what I like about you the most. You know when it’s okay to push and prod, and when to back off; when it’s good-natured ribbing, and when it’s denigrating and abusive. But, and it’s something I’ve noticed happening a lot recently, whenever I am around your restraint, your filter, your  _compassion_  – it just disappears. Why? Have I done something to upset you?”

     Stiles very much wants to say something in reply: a sarcastic remark, alongside a complementary bit of frantic gesticulation at the tables being suddenly (and outrageously) turned in his direction, or a biting counterargument which will be as snappy as it will be incontrovertible, or perhaps a humorous deflection, given that situational awkwardness has rapidly given way to an emotional disquietude that’s every bit as claustrophobic as the rank basement in which they are entombed; but even as his oesophageal muscles contract and relax as usual, not a single syllable works its ways out of his mouth; and in keeping with all the previous occasions on which his speech and intelligence abandoned him, Stiles is left confused and deeply unsettled about his lot.

     But Derek isn’t done yet: apparently, when he’s on a roll he’s  _on a roll_.

     “You know what’s funny, Stiles? I’ll tell you,” he continues enigmatically, nose pressed insistently into Stiles’ cheek, his breath scaldingly hot. “What’s funny is that I don’t really mind. You mock me, you mock my choice of clothing, the way I walk, talk and think, the way I drive, or eat, or  _fight_  to _survive_  – literally everything I do, you somehow find a fault with. It’s like I exist to be insulted by you. And – and I don’t mind it. At all. And that  _frustrates_  me. It doesn’t irritate or annoy or anger or depress me, Stiles – it frustrates me. Do you get that?”

     The number of times Stiles has been on the edge of a precipice requires exactly zero number of fingers to denote, so he really doesn’t have a frame of reference, yet that’s precisely how he feels at this moment: standing – tottering, rather, on the edge of a precipice. Why, he cannot say; which is remarkable considering how indiscriminately garrulous he is. All he is cognizant of – if cognizant is the word he’s looking for – is his elevated heart-rate, clammy palms, and a parched throat which refuses to damp no matter how many times he gulps.

     “C–Could you speak more plainly?” he mutters to Derek, holding himself still in place, should the wolf-man’s insanity find expression in a more physical form. “I–I swear I’m not trying to pull a Chandler here – it’s just that you’ve just now said so many words in such a weird way that my brain’s having trouble processing everything, ’cause, you know, you’re you and you don’t talk – I mean, you don’t talk as much as you have just now, and it’s, you know, taking a bit of an adjustment on my part, so could you, I don’t know, like use common layman terms and twenty-first century slang and then try again?” He swallows compulsively, then swallows again. “Also, uh, could you move away a little, ’cause I feel like I’m being literally pressed into the wall by a crazy bea– a man, a perfectly sane man! Thank you very much.”

     Had his past experiences in areas of interpersonal interactions, the circumstances in which he grew up, his very nature, been different to what they were or had been in reality – had he, moreover, been looking into Derek’s eyes, now burning an iridescent blue, rather than at the side of his stubble-covered cheek, caught, simultaneously, by an impulse to pet and to punch – Stiles would have understood without the waste of mental or temporal energy to what subject Derek is alluding: grasped immediately, and faultlessly, at the confession simmering under the guise of a haphazardly delivered reprimand.

     There’s a pointed, weighted silence after Stiles’ disjointed garrulity has taken its ill-advised flight. Indeed, it wouldn’t be paltering with the truth to say that the silence – the pause, if you prefer – is positively pregnant, not to mention tense as a tightly drawn bow-string: Stiles desperately holding on to his resolve to betray not a single twitch of a muscle as he waits for Derek to remove his solid, looming person from his immediate vicinity and retreat to a safe distance of the opposite side of the continent.

     How long they both might have stood there, Stiles can’t say; archaeologists would have unearthed them millions of years from now, buried in the relic of a basement, and gasped incredulously at the image with which they were presented – is this a re-enactment of a scene from Shakespeare, they would have wondered and gasped in a religious ecstasy – had not Scott McCall, the bumbling messiah, arrived in time to put an end to this farce of a stalemate.

     Scott breaks in upon the scene as Scott usually breaks in upon scenes: thoughtlessly, presumably unprepared, and entirely oblivious to the concept of subtlety. The thunderous crashing of the rotten wooden door first alerts Derek to his imminent arrival, who has to practically dismount from Stiles with the way he had been looming, followed by Scott literally vaulting down the stairs and landing in front of them in all his vibrant, werewolf, good Samaritan glory. One need only pat his head and say, ‘good boy,’ and Scott’s joy would be complete, by the look of things.

     “Stiles, you okay, bro?” he enquires earnestly.

     “Peachy.”

     Scott then turns to Derek, oozing puppyish enthusiasm, and is comically taken aback at the tattered state of his appearance. “Dude, what happened to you?”

     “Now, now, Scott,” Stiles interjects, raising a Buddha-like hand of caution, “let’s not cast aspersions on the way people look, even if those people are Derek. We simply do not comment on people’s appearance, no matter how desperately we want to. And shame on you, by the way,” he grumbles to Derek, “letting me think you’d been kidnapped too. Thanks for the grey hair.” Not allowing Derek to get in a word edgewise, which the man is obviously preparing to do, he promptly addresses Scott once more, “Derek, I’ll have you know, has had to make certain sacrifices in the interest of making sure certain puny human beings were unharmed and safe from danger. That such a sacrifice was neither necessary nor really appreciated by said human beings is another matter entirely.”

     Stiles keeps his gaze fixed on Scott, ignoring Derek’s glare as it turns to him.

     “Who are we talking about here?” asks Scott, head tilted in an adorably genuine display of puzzlement. “Who are the human beings Derek’s helped? I don’t smell anybody else here. Were there other people here? Why can’t I smell them? Derek, why can’t smell all the other people in this place?”

     “There’s no one else here, Scott!” Derek predictably erupts, for reasons only Derek understands. “And Stiles, stop confusing Scott!”

     “No, no,” Scott remonstrates cheerfully, “Stiles can confuse me if he wants. I don’t mind. He’s my bro. Bros can confuse each other without one or the other getting mad about it.”

     “You can call it a rule if you want: when it comes to bros, anything goes,” says Stiles, fist-bumping Scott before finally standing up from his perch on the grimy, algae-infested, almost certainly peed-in corner of the basement’s floor. “You probably wouldn’t understand,” he offers cuttingly to Derek.

     “Yeah, nonsense generally tends to not make sense to me,” Derek parries with just as much bite.

     “See,” Stiles hisses to Scott, pointing a ‘thou art the traitor’ finger at Derek. “This is what I was talking about yesterday.”

     “The emergency DAW conference?” says Scott, frowning. “This is the Derek Acting Weird part you were ranting about last night? I thought it was more… more. But this is just normal Derek – ”

     “Thank you, Scott,” says Derek, shooting a look of petty triumph at Stiles.

     “ – being a grumpy dick to everyone around him for no reason whatsoever,” Scott finishes, to Stiles guffawing laughter, merrily unconcerned that he may just have earned himself the honour of being the second most loathed person in Derek’s list of persons he loathes the most. “Anyway, let’s get you out of here. Your dad’s been going nuts, so prepare for a lecture. Maybe a grounding or two.”

     “He can’t ground me. I’m an adult now. I have my own rules and everything. Although I do kind of live in his house, so maybe I kind of do owe him a bit of responsibility on my part. Oh, well. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Yes, Scott.  _We_. Bros face the music together; no bros left behind; and a third proverb about bros that’s currently escaping my mind. So, what was it?” he asks Scott, as they pick their way out the basement, Derek bringing up the rear. “Give me the sit-rep. Who were those hunters? What did they want? Anyone we know hurt? Do we need to alert daddy Argent that is turf is being poached on by other daddy hunters. Wait, that sounded wrong.”

     “Um.”

     “Don’t worry, Scotty, my boy,” says Stiles sagaciously. “Tell Stiles the honest truth. Unleash your troubles unto him. Nothing, and I mean nothing, you say will surprise me. Unless they were, like, you know, literal demons from the underworld. Although I guess we did kind of have demons that year, you know the one I’m talking about, though they were awfully persistent on being identified by their correct nationality, so I guess that rules out truly and fundamentally a minion of and from the bowels of the biblical or Grecian hell. Or were they? Perhaps they immigrated? Or emigrated? How would that even work? Is there a concept of hell in Hinduism? Because that’s the only religion we haven’t inadvertently insulted by brazenly misappropriating their cultural and mythological heritages and incorporating them into the mainstream American fantasia. Then again, they did have rakshasas in that show, the one with the – ”

     “Scott, for the love of god, will you answer him before I give the Sherriff an actual reason to lock me up?” snaps Derek, seemingly out of the blue. “Like murdering his son, for example?”

     “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Scott exclaims, in a magnificent display of outrage on Stiles’ behalf. “Cool your jets, bro. What’s wrong with you? Don’t go threatening people with murder. Not so loudly, at least.”

     “And he wonders why my compassion disappears when we’re in each other’s company,” Stiles whispers to Scott, in full knowledge that Derek can hear him perfectly.

     “Saying things like that can get you arrested, Derek,” says Scott wisely.

     “Might make you look guilty, too, even if you are wrongfully accused of a crime,” adds Stiles.

     “Wrongfully accused of a crime?” Derek repeats, fuming on the go; the man really makes it very difficult to discuss anything candidly, given the eye-wideningly long list of psychological triggers he entertains – not that Stiles is blaming anyone, he just dislikes having to needlessly censor himself because certain people are too sensitive about certain topics, even though said topics become perilously relevant at the drop of a hat, and upon the open and neutral discussion of which rests the fate of several innocent human beings. “Like murdering my own sister, you mean?”

     No, Stiles does not mean that particular can of angsty worms specifically; nevertheless, he answers truthfully, “We did not know you back then. For all we knew, you could have.”

     “You were acting very suspiciously during that time,” offers Scott, understanding leaking from every pore of his being.

     “I can’t believe it,” says Derek, looking every bit like he really can’t believe it. “You two morons are actually trying to justify having me arrested for the murder of my sister?”

     “Well, we didn’t know it was your sister, okay?” Stiles attempts to clarify.

     “Yeah, we just thought you were a psychotic serial killer loner who killed women and ate raw deer meat in the dead of night. Besides, you know, the leather. Everything about you that time screamed ‘dubious character, alert the citizenry’,” Scott neatly sums up, amusingly to the point. “Not that we were judging on appearances alone. Right, Stiles?”

     Crossing his serpentine arms across his mountainous chest and glaring as though it’s an Olympic sport in which he’s competing for gold, Derek now assumes his Alpha posture; which inspires an internal giggle in Stiles because he’s no longer an Alpha but a measly, if muscley, Beta. Stiles still pretends to be nostalgically afraid of it – there’s always a brief flash of unconscious hurt in Derek’s eyes when he pins Stiles to a vertical or horizontal surface, only to have Stiles brush him off with the dignity and respect one would accord a mosquito, and really, the man has had his fair share of invidious suffering, more than he deserves, so Stiles generally humours him by squeaking and quaking in feigned terror, as sad as that sounds – but he doesn’t actually fear for his life anymore when Derek gets in one of his moods; he has punched him in the face enough times now to do away with such formalities.

     Derek growls audibly, eyes flashing a smouldering blue, spitting thusly: “So, the fact that I wore a black leather jacket and avoided company because I had just been forced to come back to a town where my entire family had been burned alive, in order to scour the forest for the mangled body of my last living relative convinced you that I was a psychotic serial killer? That’s it?”

     “It isn’t as cut and dry as that,” counters Stiles. “Weird things were happening all over town, okay? And it’s a small town, where everyone knows everyone. And there you were: a stranger come home with a particularly disturbing history, popping up all over the place, lurking in shadows, haunting school grounds. Talk about being creepy. You were already headed for the slammer one way or another. What we did was, you know, expedite the process by a few months.”

     “You were kind of digging your own grave, there,” Scott puts in, sympathetically. “Sorry.”

     “So it’s  _my_  fault that you two unbelievable dumbasses thought I could be a cold-blooded killer, basing your suspicions on nothing but superficial observation coupled with flimsy circumstantial evidence? Is that what you’re saying?”

     Stiles prays for calm – in vain. “I admit that we were misinformed,” says he, “and we’re very sorry, but the process of elimination had left you as the prime and only suspect. It never occurred to us to make allowances for undead uncles operating from their creepy hospital lairs; it’s not our fault we thought it safe to exclude potentially brain-dead patients from our suspects list. How were we to know that there was an entire, hitherto unnoticed, supernatural side of things? You never explained anything to us, no matter how much we begged you to. Even when you knew better, you never did anything to help us. You just growled at us and demanded we leave things alone.”

     “Which is what you should have done!”

     “Don’t talk to me about things I should or shouldn’t have done,” says Stiles hotly, finding himself curiously nettled at Derek’s tone. He’s conscious of a dangerous undercurrent creeping into their conversation; and like all human beings who are driven chiefly by the irreproachable rationality of a true cynic rather than by the inconstant sentimentality of their more emotional counterparts, he refuses to give ground. “Not  _you_. We were sixteen, Derek. Sixteen. A couple of teenagers. Teenagers make mistakes – which I don’t think I need to remind  _you_ , of all people.” Stiles takes a deep, calming breath; mudslinging will get them nowhere. “I will not apologize for being curious; I may as well apologize of being who I am. What Scott and I did that time was ill-advised, sure, but it’s not something I’ll ever take back as something I regret having done, because I don’t.”

     “And we did do our level best to have the charges dropped if you remember,” Scott, helpfully if redundantly, supplies. “As soon as we could.”

     “And if you’re trying pin your subsequent skirmishes with the law on our misguided attempt to aid the local police force that one time, before we knew you weren’t a very obvious serial killer but a painfully awkward adult with the social skills of a chimpanzee crossbred with a demented bear, I’m sorry to say but this is it for us being friends or allies or whatever the hell it is we were – ”

     “What? That’s not what I’m trying to do, Stiles!” denies Derek, stepping into Stiles’ personal space.

     “But clearly that’s what you were thinking,” Stiles rebuts, taking an unconscious step forward himself, so that he and Derek are a hair’s breadth away from melding into one; so close are they, in fact, that Stiles can feel himself singe at the intensity of heat Derek is radiating. “Or rather, that’s what you think. It’s been on your mind. Why else would you bring up your incident the moment I said ‘wrongfully accused’?”

     “I don’t know, Stiles. Maybe because I  _was_  wrongfully accused of murdering my own sister.”

     “And acquitted!” says Stiles, so fantastically done with this particular line of enquiry he could scream. “Is this really what your little speech was about earlier?”

     “What speech?”

     “The one where you said that I  _insult_  you all the time? That I have no compassion? That’s what you said, didn’t you? That my filters disappears whenever you’re around? You wanted to dig up old scars? You were spoiling for a fight?”

     “What? No. No, that’s not what I wanted, Stiles,” says Derek. “It couldn’t have been further from what I wanted to say!”

     “Then what  _did_  you want to say, Derek? Enlighten me. And can you please not be your usual mysterious self for once?”

     “I wasn’t trying to be mysterious! How does one even – no, forget that! I won’t let you confuse me like you do Scott. What I wanted to say before, Stiles, you  _frustrating_ specimen of a human being, was that, yes, you do insult me every chance you get, but I don’t mind it!”

     “Oh, I insult you every chance I get but you don’t mind it,” Stiles repeats scornfully. “What does that mean? Use your Big Boy words, Derek. Even your laughably limited vocabulary must be able to cough up some priceless gems by aid of which you could make sense like a normal human being. I swear it’ll test a saint’s patience, making sense of you.”

     “And while we’re on the theme of ‘sensing’, am I correct in assuming that I’m sensing a really weird vibe between you two right now?” mutters Scott awkwardly as he tries his best to keep up with the flow of the conversation, and is promptly and totally ignored.

     Stiles waits and waits for an explanation, but apart from seeming like he may spontaneously combust from the (preternatural) strain of emotional repression – and what a spectacle of devastation might that produce! – Derek does nothing. His kaleidoscopic eyes rake every feature on Stiles’ face as though he’s cataloguing the many defects which stands out to his hyperfine vision, breathing heavily – violently – through his flared nostrils, his lips tightly pursed in an effort to stave off the snarl that Stiles can see building up his throat – and quiet, not as one struck dumb but like one who would not speak even under pain of torture.

     “Well?” he demands. His heart is beating alarmingly fast and he’s expecting any second for Scott to intervene and hurry him off to the hospital for a cardiological check-up. “Are you going to say anything at all, or should I just go home and wait for a letter to arrive in which you’ll make yourself clear, like some morose protagonist in a regency novel? I know you are not as dumb as you look. You can be quite the fountain of oratorical exuberance when you put your mind to it. What’s stopping you now? Is being straightforward such an impossibility for you? You just  _cannot_  talk in simple, uncomplicated terms?” Stiles closes his eyes and breathes out through his nose, as much a sign of the day’s toils catching up with him as a gesture of defeat in the face of an impossibility like Derek. “You know what? You can keep your secrets. I don’t care. My life is already a complicated mess without you putting in your money’s worth. I am going home. Let’s go, Scott.”

     “We’re not done yet,” says Derek, at last, and too late.

     Stiles manoeuvres between Scott and Derek and makes for the nearest exit, but before he can so much as take a step, Derek catches his upper arm in a vice-like, indescribably painful grip.

     Stiles, of course, hisses out in pain, and between one moment and the next, Scott has Derek firmly pressed against the wall with an arm across his chest, his eyes burning a fiery, terrifying red.

     “Back off,” says he, emitting a low, hair-raising growl.

     “Sorry,” Derek, contrite, says to Stiles, who is massaging his arm with an extremely waspish look at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you so hard.”

     “Doesn’t excuse the fact that you did, Derek,” says Scott, as severe as a school marm. On occasions Stiles finds it equally fascinating and bewildering, how effortlessly Scott managed to switch from over-excited puppy to stone-cold sober disciplinarian at a moment’s notice. “If you can’t control yourself, take a walk and cool down. Look, man, I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but don’t you ever dare do that to Stiles, okay? To anyone. But particularly Stiles. It’s a really shitty way to treat someone who not only deserves your respect, but your gratitude.”

     “I won’t,” says Derek, head falling back, eyes closing shut in repentance. “I won’t, Scott. You can let me up now. Hurting Stiles in any way is the last thing I ever want to do. Believe me.”

     Stiles receives this bit of news with more surprise than is probably warranted in this situation; Derek apologizing, however, and with a witness no less, is a once in a lifetime occurrence, to be cherished and revered, and Stiles finds himself softening towards him even in spite of better considerations. “Let him go, Scott,” he relents, gaze fixed on Derek, even as the latter’s eyes open and stare back. “If there’s one thing about Derek that we can say to be absolutely true, it’s that he never wants to hurt anyone, even accidentally.”

     Scott complies without delay, exchanging his aggressively responsible Alpha stance for something more befitting his puppyish temperament. “I’m letting this go for now,” he tells them, “but you two will need to postpone your arguing until you’ve both cooled down a little. I don’t want a repetition of what just happened. It’s been a long day, and we all need a bit of rest, so I’m going to take Stiles home now.”

     “I will take Stiles home,” says Derek.

     “Uh, Stiles can take himself home, thank you very much,” Stiles reasonably points out to the other two, and is denied all attention; for all in the world as though being held hostage for six hours with no food or water has somehow rendered him unable to function properly or to make proper decisions functionally or something to that effect. He may be fighting a losing battle with aching hunger and crippling dizziness, but everyone knows that that meant nothing: he can so carry out a march of civil disobedience right now and not break a sweat.

     “I said I will,” Scott insists staunchly. “Derek, I think the world of you, man, I do, but do you really think that I am going to leave Stiles alone with you right now, after that?”

     “I apologized.”

     “And yet Stiles will be nursing a nasty bruise for the rest of the week at the very least. His dad, the Sherriff, will notice, because he notices everything. He knows Stiles won’t tell him the exact truth how he got hurt so he will corner me. What will I do? I will tell him the exact truth. What will happen then? He’ll scold me, which I wouldn’t mind in the least because he’s like a father to me. I will say that you are a nice guy who just doesn’t know his own strength when caught up in the heat of the moment; but then he’ll ask me why I allow someone like you in touching distance of Stiles – any human, actually – if that’s the case. This isn’t the first time you’ve unintentionally hurt Stiles, you know. Now what do you think my answer to that will be?”

     Derek expectedly has nothing by way of an answer to give, so he stays silent.

     “I will always,” continues Scott softly and sincerely, “always give you the benefit of the doubt, Derek, except when it comes to my friends. I have seen them hurt enough times that I will not take any chances. Do you understand me?”

     “I understood, Scott,” says Derek with an hint of impatience: if he has internalized Scott’s admittedly eloquent warning even slightly, his tone belies it. “Even so I’ll insist that I take Stiles home.”

     “Man, you are like a dog with a bone,” Scott exclaims wonderingly.

     “ _Don’t_ ,” says Derek to Stiles just as Stiles is about to open his mouth to point out the ovbious joke. “Scott, how did you get here?” Derek asks.

     “Um, I ran.”

     “And your bike?”

     “At Deaton’s. I rushed out of there as soon as you called me.”

     “Then how do you plan to take Stiles home? He’s clearly not fit enough to walk all the way back. What are you going to do? Give him a piggy-back ride?”

     “ _Don’t_ ,” Scott says to Stiles just as Stiles is about to open his mouth to point out the obvious you-know-what.

     “You both suck,” he mutters glumly.

     “I parked my car not far from here,” Derek discloses to general surprise. “I’ll give him a ride.”

     “You drove here?” says Stiles, animated by an intense relief. “Oh thank God! For a second there I was worried I’d have to actually walk all the way home. I mean, I am an independent man who needs no werewolf to drive him everywhere, but not  _that_  independent. For this spot of foresight alone, something I would’ve thought historically impossible given your track record, I’ll forgive you every idiotic thing you’ve ever said or done in the past two weeks. That’s the best Stiles can do.”

     “And before we get distracted again,” says Scott, once they are out in the open, “you will be happy to know that it wasn’t hunters that kidnapped you, Stiles.”

     “Really? Then who were they?”

     “Guess. I swear it’s a good one.”

     “Lemme see, lemme see – ”

     “It was the mafia,” says Derek, morosely glaring at them both.

     “ _Dude_ ,” Scott hisses at him in a chorus of outrage. “Not cool.”

     “It’s not the time to play guessing games.”

     Stiles, giddy with a sudden and powerful astonishment, gasps, “Oh my God,  _really_?! It was the  _mafia_? I was kidnapped by the _mafia_?  _The_  mafia? The – mafia? Mafia, the?”

     “I would say your surprise isn’t worth the revelation, but it’s your glee that’s really worrying me,” says Derek, squinting disapprovingly. “No one should that gleeful on discovering they were kidnapped by the mafia. It’s not an accomplishment.”

     “Anyway,” Scott says to Stiles, “it was the brother of the guy your dad arrested last week. They were going to ransom you for his release.”

     “That is  _so_  cool!” crows Stiles, tickled to the bones. “Beacon Hills finally getting its very own mafia. I mean, amateurs, clearly,” he says, gesturing to the ramshackle construct in which he had been kept, an abandoned house on the outskirts of town which may or may not have been the site of a gruesome murder or two some years ago, if memory serves, “and obviously unused to the business, but  _still_! Gotta start somewhere. And what a fine start: nabbing the Sherriff’s kid in broad daylight! And let me tell you we really were due for one or two groups of  _normal_  human criminals.”

     “Yeah,” says Derek disparagingly. “That is exactly what this town needed. I’ll bring the car around,” he adds, stepping away to the left of the unkempt cobbled path and making for the dark bushes which border this god-forsaken hovel in the middle of Californian wilderness. Stiles refuses to admit the pang of disappointment he feels when Derek doesn’t somersault in that trademark diva way of his. “You two knuckleheads, stay put.”

     “Knuckleheads?” Scott mumbles, glancing at Derek as he is swallowed by the darkness. By his side, Stiles utters a noise of sympathy. “Why does the man keep talking like that?”

     “Beats me,” says Stiles, shaking his head in disappointment. “I keep telling him to stop talking like that kooky grandpa who reminisces about the good old days and shakes sticks at little kids when they trespass his lawn, and maybe then the upstanding citizenry of Beacon Hills will stop scowling at him as though he weren’t singlehandedly leading us impressionable kids down the path of teenage delinquency and depravity, but does he listen to me?”

     There’s a moment of silence, then Scott ventures an expectant, “Does he?” because the concept of rhetoric is lost on this literal and earnest fool.

     Exhaling a laboured sigh, Stiles rolls his eyes heavenward. “No, Scott,” he answers, notwithstanding. “He doesn’t. He doesn’t listen to me at all. I think Derek’s made it his sworn mission in life to make our lives as difficult as he can.”

 

     “Can I ask you something without you getting your knickers in a twist about it?” he asks Derek, strapping himself in the seat and settling back.

     “That’s a first,” says Derek, revving the engine. “You are asking, for once. Usually you just make demands.”

     Stiles sighs impatiently. “Can you stop implying that I live to make your life difficult all the time? You made yourself abundantly clear back there. No further reminders necessary.”

     “Stiles,” said Derek, sounding equally as irritated. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Stop twisting everything I say into a personal attack against yourself. If ever I have a problem with having you in my life, I will tell you; but until such a time comes, do me the courtesy to believe that when I say you do not make my life difficult, I  _mean_  it. Okay? I am sorry if I ever made you feel like you do.” He took a breath, and then continued, “Fine, ask me. I’ll try my best to answer.”

     “What happened to the soccer mom car?”

     “Too impractical.”

     “We used to think that about your Camaro.”

     “I know.”

     “Are you going to buy the Camaro again?”

     “No.”

     “Why not? Not pressed for cash, are you?”

     “I’m not as rich as you think, Stiles.”

     “You own a building.”

     “And as everyone will tell you, it was bad investment.”

     “You  _own_  a  _building_.”

     “Have you seen any tenants on your way in or out of there? You haven’t, because I don’t have any, because they don’t like the building, and they don’t like the suspect surroundings, and most importantly, they don’t like the owner with a previous arrest record.”

     “Huh.”

     “ ‘Huh’ is right.”

     “But I thought you bought the building because you were paranoid about someone or something attacking you out of the blue and you needed a safe space of your own to brood in.”

     “It’s not paranoia if there  _are_  people out to get you.”

     “Then at least the building is being put to the use for which you bought it.”

     “Probably. But I thought it would be a place I would eventually – nothing.”

     “Go on.”

     “You wouldn’t understand.”

     “Try me. There are very few things I can’t understand once I put my mind to it.”

     “You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to not have a home of your own.”

     “Oh.”

     “Did I make you uncomfortable?”

     “No,” Stiles demurs immediately, sounding unnaturally high-pitched to his own ears. “No, no. Pfft! What? You have got to try a lot harder to make Stiles uncomfortable.”

     “So, yes.”

     Sighing, Stiles relents, “Fine, yes. I am a little uncomfortable. No, not a little. I’m too uncomfortable. Not about you saying I wouldn’t understand what not having a home of your own felt like – that’s true enough that I don’t need to waste my breath – but about you admitting something you never otherwise would. You normally don’t talk about anything; but when you do, you are always unflinchingly honest. And that just reminds me how much of a liar I am; how forgetful and insensitive.”

     “You aren’t –”

     “I am, Derek,” Stiles firmly asserts, even though Derek attempting to deny it for his sake is a nice, unexpected bit of character deconstruction. “I’m not ashamed to admit my shortcomings, and I have no right to, given how callously I point out everyone else’s faults. Yours, especially – and that’s worse because of all the people I know, you probably deserve a lot more latitude than I give you. I keep forgetting that while, yes, you are an inveterate asshole most of the time, you do have actual reasons for acting like that. Not that that excuses anything; people are generally too apt to blame their terrible behaviour on a difficult past and expect to get away with it. I don’t like those people, which is probably why I’m so unkind to you. But the thing about you – the difference – is that you never behave as badly as I make it out to be, and,” and it is here that Derek’s weird speech clicks with him, “ _this_  is what you were talking about! I do treat you more unfairly than others. I am  _horrible_  to you. No restraint, no filters.  _Zero_  compassion!”

     “I said I don’t mind it, Stiles.”

     “Well, you should!”

     “It’s all right. I forgive you, okay? Stop working yourself into a state for no reason.”

     “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe  _you_. Why did you never say anything before?”

     “What, between battling for our lives I should have taken a moment to give you a piece of my mind for all the shit you say to me? I am a big boy, Stiles. I can take criticism. Especially from someone like you.”

     “What does that mean?”

 

     “What happened to you? It was the mafia, right? They couldn’t have done that to you. They didn’t have Wolfsbane bullets, did they? Was it a – oh my God – a supernatural mafia?”

     “No, it was the  _regular_  mafia and they had  _regular_  bullets, Stiles, but you see, my clothes don’t have supernatural healing abilities. So when bullets hit them, they tend to tear,” said Derek sarcastically

     “Uh,  _no_ , my dear Watson,” Stiles corrected him with just as much bite. “When bullets hit clothing, they leave  _holes_ , not ribbons. Particularly not the ones like yours. What really happened, Derek?”

     “Nothing ‘really’ happened, Stiles.”

     “Your clothes were in tatters. There was blood on them. Too much blood. Did you – no, that can’t be right.” His forehead corrugated as he concentrated, mind racing, “But then what other explanation is there? If the incompetent mafia didn’t do that to you and there’s no supernatural threat that’s currently wreaking havoc on our peaceful little Buffyville – Scott would’ve told me if there was – which means… oh my God.”

     The conclusion at which he had arrived was truly – hilariously – baffling.

     “Stiles – ” Derek began to say, but Stiles superimposed himself thusly:

     “Oh my God. Oh my  _God_. Oh my God, you did that to  _yourself_?! What – what – what – why –  _why_  did you do that? What could you have possibly wanted to achieve?” Stiles looks at Derek, notices the ruddy incandescence of embarrassment dusting his cheek, so brightly red as to stand out against the pitch-blackness of his stubble. “The most obvious answer to that would be that you were trying to impress me. Only the Derek that I know wouldn’t do that. The Derek that I know  _knows_  he does not need to resort to theatrics to try and impress me; he knows he is already very impressive as he is and if Stiles has even the tiniest ounce of the grey matter he’d know that as well.”

     “Stop.”

     “I just – it’s so  _unlike_  you that I’m wondering if you’ve been possessed! And really, what madness did possess you to do such a thing? If you wanted to show off your ridiculous physique, you could have just treated me to strip show. I wouldn’t have said no to that. Why do  _that_? You gave me a heart attack. With the way you looked, I was almost ready to look for an abandoned chainsaw in the basement so that I could be prepared to chop off some part of your body before you screamed at me to do so. Which reminds me: where did all the blood come from? Did you – no, you couldn’t have – but then again –  _oh_  my  _God_!”

     “I will punch you in the throat if you don’t shut up.”

     “You were  _clumsy_?! Oh  _my_  God! You were so excited to make an impressive entry into my prison and make me swoon by your rippling musculature that you became clumsy! Oh God, this is the best day  _ever_.”

     “Quite a tale you are spinning there, Hans. Too bad that’s  _not_  what happened.”

     “Uh-huh. Sure. I believe you. In your haste to tear off your Henley you nicked yourself, didn’t you? Superficial cuts tend to bleed a lot more, and you must have cut yourself pretty badly. That’s why you were practically bathed in it. Wow. You’ve come a long way, haven’t you? From loathing my very presence when we first met, to grudgingly acknowledging my worth in towing you all out of trouble, to this moment right now – you doing unbelievably ridiculous things to impress me. Oh my, Derek, you really have grown into a real live boy at last.”

     And he dissolved into riotous laughter once more.

     “Are you done?”

     “It’s too soon to say. Ask me again in a hundred years – my answer will probably be the same. Oh, wow, look at that: tears. It has been so long since anyone’s made me cry laughing. Kudos to you, dude.”

     “Stiles, that’s enough.”

     “I know, I know. It’s just that – I keep thinking what must have going through your head as you planned your grand entrance and the expression you make in my head are pretty funny. You are such an awkward turtle, Derek. It’s very endearing.”

 

     “We should hang out more. You know what, we  _will_  hang out more. It’s funny to think it now. I always plan on inviting you home for dinner or something – even my dad’s suggested it once or twice – but I just shrug it off thinking you like keeping to yourself. That I have no right to impose on you in such a manner. You’ve never given any indication that you might be open to socialization of any kind.”

     “I don’t like crowds; and I do like keeping to myself most of the time. But that does not mean I can’t make exceptions. It’s nice to have people who want you to join them because they  _want_  you to join them, rather than have you be the day’s good deed in their Boy Scout’s journal. Or worse: inviting me out of pity or some misguided sense of fellowship. If you ask me, and if it’s just you and the Sherriff, I might agree.”

     “Okay, then. You know, you’ve been making a lot of exceptions for me lately. You don’t snap back at me anymore when I keep pestering you all day long – and you’re not just polite, you’re  _welcoming_. If there’s some sort of supernatural trouble in town and I suggest some absolutely ludicrous plan of action, you not only listen to what I have to say, you try to defend me when others object. Twice in the past week alone you have driven me round town, against needless inconvenience and, I suspect, better judgment, and not made one derogatory remark about my ramshakle jeep, my cluelessnes or my recklessness.”

     “You’d rather I be rude to you?”

     “No,” Stiles says, laughing quietly. “No, I like you better this way. I’d go so far as to say that at this moment, here, now, in this car, I like you better than I ever have.”

     “Isn’t that a good thing?”

     “It is.”

     “Then why the scepticism? The surprise?”

     “I don’t know. Through most of our time together you’ve always been Derek Hale, child of tragedy, werewolf extraordinaire, he with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he who growls, and lurks, and communicates with eyebrows, displaying a monomaniacal obsession with physical exercise –”

     “Your  _point_ , Stiles?”

     “My point, Derek, is that I’ve always known you to be one type of person – one who prefers quiet, eschews company, hates enjoying himself – and this past month your behavior has been blatantly contradictory.”

     “And I ask again: is that not a good thing?”

     “If I didn’t know better,” Stiles says, in lieu of a direct answer, “I’d think you were buttering me up, in your special awkward turtle way.”

     There was a most telling pause, and although thoroughly ambiguous as to the degree to which his flippant observation might be on the mark, Stiles feels his heartbeat ratchet up.

     “And if I was?” says Derek in a low, thrilling rumble of voice.

     Stiles, through great effort, breathes himself calm enough to says, “And if you were, what?”

     “Buttering you up?”

     “It would mean that you want something from me.”

     “What if I want something from you? Would you give me it?”

     “Depends on what you want.”

     “What if I ask nicely?”

     “I’ll probably throw holy water in your face to make sure you weren’t a demon in Derek disguise.”

     “I can be nice. I am a nice man, Stiles,” says Derek, his tone almost too earnest to bear. “A pretty upstanding guy.”

     “Well, you are pretty – I’ll give you that. As far as the ‘upstanding’ is concerned, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

     “You haven’t answered my question.”

     “Pardon?”

     “What if there was something I wanted from you? What would you do?”

     “Ask me, and I’ll tell you. Ask me  _nicely_ , and I might just agree to whatever it is you want.”

     “Okay, then. I will.”

     There’s a prickly feeling at the back of his neck, the one you get when you’ve spotted the gigantic elephant in the room dancing for a bit of your time – but, given that it’s Derek, the more appropriate phraseology would be ‘the miniscule ant in the car’ in which the topic of undivided attention and deliberate ignorance is conspicuous by its absence – or mired under heapfuls of obscuring sand.

    

Having exhausted every other conceivable means of relieving his mental and emotional state of utter agony into which he has been thrown by the astonishing realization that he may just fancy Derek in ways one really should not fancy someone like Derek, Stiles is forced to conclude that the only thing to be done now – the only recourse by which he could ensure his sanity remains intact – is to treat the problem at its source.

     Talk to Derek, in short.

     “Are you going to stand there for the rest of your life?” is how Derek chooses to greet him after he pulls the door open and gazes at Stiles with a basilisk stare for a good full leisurely minute, rippling, brawny arms predictably crossed across his massive chest, hirsute brows predictably furrowed, and an unwarranted glower – because if anyone in a one mile radius has a reason to glower, it’s Stiles – predictably in place in his eyes. “Or can I tempt you inside, before you freeze to death on my threshold?”

     “Seriously?” says Stiles, not a little put out by the sight of Derek looking as dashing as ever. If they were starring cast of a movie which sought misguidedly to mimic the uplifting charm of the motion pictures of the Silent Era, the title card introducing Derek would read, stylised in mono corsiva: “Derek Hale, a divinely handsome man,” whereas Stiles’ would read: “Stiles Stilinski, skin and bones,” scribbled in unsightly stick figures. “I am furious with you, which I very well know you can smell with your super-sniffer, so can you give me a minute to just be that? I am too furious to deal with the smooth-talking you.”

     “The smooth-talking me?” mumbles Derek, puzzled. “What does that mean?”

     “It means you keep your pie-hole shut and let me fume in peace.”

     “Okay, Dean Winchester. But can you fume from inside the loft? You’re letting the cold in.”

     Despite all instincts telling him to the contrary, Stiles points out the obvious. “You’re a werewolf.”

     “No one likes being cold. Even werewolves. Especially werewolves.”

     “I thought you didn’t feel cold like a normal human being,” says Stiles. “Along with a million other things you can’t do like a normal human being,” he adds  _sotto voce_.

     Derek’s eyes, usually so arresting in their multi-coloured aesthetic, narrow balefully, as though he’s spied a nasty, stinking bug taking a dip in his protein shake. “I am going to be the bigger person and let your angry muttering slide,” he says, and thunder strike him dead if Stiles isn’t practically swooning from his generosity. “On the other hand, of course werewolves don’t feel cold like a normal human being, Stiles. The fact that our bodies run higher temperatures means we feel the cold more strongly.”

     “Seriously.”

     “Saying ‘seriously’ every time anything even slightly out of the ordinary happens to you does not make you sound clever. It just makes you sound like an extra on a soap opera, that airheaded blonde who hangs in the background and whose only job is to react to things happening to other people. Get in.”

     Stiles is understandably bamboozled. “You know, this week has been full of surprises for me,” he says, “but this one takes the cake by a Kentucky mile. I don’t think there are words enough in the English language that could adequately encapsulate my surprise at this revelation. Derek Hale knows what a soap opera is! I was under the impression that the most consistent source of your entertainment was cave paintings of dinosaurs and wooly mammoths.”

     “Stiles, get in before I slam the door shut with you standing in the way.”

     “There! That’s it! That tone, right there!” exclaims Stiles, pointing a hysterical finger at Derek. “That’s what I am talking about! That is who you are! That is who you should always be! Rude, insensitive, asshole!”

     “You are only listing synonyms,” Derek remarks wearily. “Can you please get in now? I’ll rather not have the front door wide open for my enemies to stroll right in, and I’d rather you were on this side of the door, where I can see you, than the alternative, where I can’t.”

     “Again, with the – why can’t you be the asshole Derek all the time whom I love to hate than this… weird guy who confuses me with his weirdness? Is consistency in character and personality too much to ask for in this godforsaken town?”

     “You are accusing me of being weird? You, Stiles?”

     “There you go again! Stop switching personalities without warning!”

     “Stiles, it’s ten o’clock in the morning. It’s too early in the day for me to deal with your… uniqueness.”

     “My uniqueness?”

     “You know what –” Sinuous arms undulating, Derek leans determinedly over Stiles to grab the handle of the slider, and shakes it threateningly.

     “Fine, fine, you animal.” Stiles manouvres his skittish way round the hulking, fresh-smelling wolf-man – scrupulous that no part of either his anatomy or attire comes in contact with those of Derek’s; he fears he might literally expire from oversensitivity – stomps one-two-three, comes to a halt and turns around, making sure the severity of his reluctance is unimpeachably audible to all lupine, or otherwise enhanced, ears. “I am coming in,” he further adds resentfully; “but don’t think for a furry second that I’m doing it because you told me to. I am my own man who has his own mind. Which he listens to, to the exclusion of all external and undue influence. I’ll literally strangle myself before I let upstart werewolves dictate my actions.”

     “I stand in awe of your independence,” says Derek, smiling – and for the millionth time in a row, as far as Derek’s smiles are concerned, Stiles is unable to determine if it is his habitual sardonic one or something more heartfelt.

     “Well,” says he expectantly, after an uneasy silence of a couple of minutes has passed by unbroken by either of them.

     Having ushered –  _forced_  – Stiles in and the door clamorously shut, Derek has resumed his posture of model solidity and silence in front of the massive glass window, rife with all the predictable behavioral accoutrements on display, vis-à-vis, arms, brow, chest, person, heart – all furrowed.

     “ ‘Well’ ?” he repeats back at Stiles.

     “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

     “What exactly do you want me to say?”

     “I don’t know, what do you normally say to people who barge into your hermitage without prior notice?”

     “People generally know better than to invade my privacy uninvited, unless they plan to kill me which understandably necessitates subterfuge of some kind. You are, as always, the one exception. Also: weren’t you just a moment ago demanding to fume in peace? Although why you’d need to do that here of all places is beyond me. Well, I thought I’d let you get on with that before I got on with my interrogation of your motives. Seemed a more appropriate course of action, as the host.”

     “Ah. Been brushing up on our etiquettes, have we?”

     “No, I’ve found that you can be managed more successfully after you’ve been given a minute or two to let your inner Stiles out without interruption.”

     “I hope you choke on a leaf of spinach the next time you slurp your muscle juice like a health nut.”

     Stiles has no idea how to broach the subject, now that he is here. However calm and in his typical, hyperactive element he might appear on the outside, internally he is agitated to the extreme. He knows what he wants to say, has a bulleted list in his head of all the things he wants to cover before a concrete resolution about this very sensitive, deeply personal issue is reached, knows how he will phrase what he wants to say so as to avoid unintentional misunderstandings when the moment of reckoning finally arrives, but he is at horrible loss as how to steer the conversation toward it. One cannot simply walk up to one’s (recently discovered) object of interest and put forward one’s innermost feelings without a prior how-do-you-do, even if sentiments are very much and gladly reciprocated: a groundwork must be laid. All they have done so far is argue, a circuitous, if light-hearted, exchange of sub-standard wit, which is ill-suited as a prologue for emotional revelations.

     Derek isn’t going to be of any help in this matter, of that Stiles is certain; Derek’s nature is averse to introducing dialogue of any kind, be it physical or emotional, but particularly the latter; once broken in, though, he would give it his all. All the heavy lifting, therefore – and by that is meant the humiliating, but necessary, encroachments into the numinous territory of human emotion and the unbearably ponderous task of its articulation – must be done by Stiles.

     If Derek has any inkling of Stiles’ true objective in visiting him, he betrays none; his poker face is already the stuff of legends amongst Beacon Hills’ supernatural circles, but far from being amused, Stiles finds himself unsurprisingly saddened by the fact. A stranger with such an absolute command over his facial muscles is an object of inveterate suspicion as a matter of course; a friend in possession of such a skill, however, is one of pity.

     “Stiles, I know I said I’d give you a moment to get yourself together,” Derek grumbles brusquely into Stiles’ pause of contemplation, “and while I meant it, I’d rather you hurried things along a little. It’s Sunday, but I’ve got things to do. Important things. Unlike  _some_  people, I can’t afford to waste my Sunday just because I feel like it.”

     “Oh, go buy a rubber dick,” Stiles replies vindictively.

     Derek frowns one of his patented frowns of puzzlement, which is vastly different from his other frowns by virtue of being a quarter of an inch above the point of confluence of his hirsute eyebrows.

     “Buy a rubber dick… to… fuck myself with it? Right? H’mm,” he says uncertainly. (And dear lord, is it sinful the way Derek pronounces ‘fuck’, as though saying it and doing it were one and the same – not that Stiles is paying any undue attention to Derek’s diction which cannot be explained away grammatically. Nu-uh. Heh, diction.) Then his eyes cleared up and narrowed, accusatorily. “That’s quite clever. I’m impressed. You are telling me to go fuck myself without actually telling me to go fuck myself. Bravo.”

     “Derek,” Stiles says, his voice colder than surface temperatures of Neptune. “Die.”

     “You are stalling,” says Derek in lieu of actual reply to Stiles’ scathing rejoinder, because he needs to make people uncomfortable as soon as he possibly can. “I’m all ears, Stiles. Just get on with it. Whatever you want to say.”

     Well, then, cutting right to the throbbing centre: the gigantic elephant in the loft. If that is how Derek wishes to play this game, Stiles would be more than happy to oblige him – he’d be delighted.

     “You told me you liked me.”

     The change in Derek’s expression from that of staid expectation to one of extreme panic and fear is as satisfying as it is sudden, and Stiles feels, quite benevolently, that that look on Derek’s face alone is worth all the anxiety and second-guessing he’s endured this week past.

     Derek quickly schools his features into something resembling composure. “I didn’t say that,” he counters, voice forgivably tremulous.

     “Yeah, you did.”

     “I distinctly remember not using those exact words in that exact order.”

     “Cowering behind technicalities, Derek? Really, with me? All right. Fine, you didn’t use those exact words,” Stiles concedes magnanimously, “but that’s only because you have an innate compulsion to make things difficult for yourself.” And he’s not going to dig into the reasons – all fourteen of them, founded in charred wood and relentless despair – for Derek behaving like that, at least not to the man’s face. “I was mistaken earlier; or rather, I misspoke. It’s not that you can’t do things like a normal human being, you Neanderthal, you,” he continues, “you just choose not to. And I get that. You want to be simple and direct, to be understood without the extraneous trappings of fine speech, but you don’t want the vulnerabilities that accompany that directness. Instead you choose to be vague and mysterious, so that, when confronted, you would be able to deny any culpability, like you are doing right now. ‘I wasn’t trying to say that, you just misunderstood.’ Am I right? Of course I am.

     “Now,” he adds a little more playfully, taking a measured step closer to Derek, who stands mute and motionless but with eyes alive and piercing like a hawk’s. “Now. Had you been a normal human being, or a normal supernatural creature, you would have picked up the phone, dialed my number, and said in your most suave voice, ‘hey, Stiles, would you be interested in going on a date with me? It’s just occurred to me that I don’t actually dislike you. I might in fact like you a whole lot more than I ever thought possible. Funny how that works, huh? And there’s a teeny tiny possibility that you might like me back. So, what say?’ That’s what you’d have said.”

     As Stiles finishes speaking, Derek turns a fetching shade of cherry, somehow becoming even handsomer in the process, and for the first time it really dawns on Stiles that Derek does actually like him a whole lot more than either of them assumed. There are bona fide feelings involved, premature though they might be at this point; and while Stiles may still claim to be a little unsure of the exact degree or the depth to which he has fallen, although fallen he certainly has, there is absolutely no question whatsoever in his mind about Derek himself.

     Derek likes him; not merely as a passing fantasy – like idly wondering what one’s life would be like in an alternate universe – which he could care less whether it became reality or not, but as an actual, discernible,  _probable_  romantic and sexual prospect.

     If unexpected, it is unexpectedly pleasing as well, and not a little exhilarating, if Stiles is honest with himself: to be fancied by someone like Derek is probably a compliment of the highest order. Not because the man is handsome, physically attractive in way that Stiles has frequently thought rather unfair to the rest of humanity, but because he is courageous – the one attribute of Derek’s that Stiles can proudly pronounce as irresistibly appealing. To have undergone so much in so short a time, living a life scarred by the most horrifying experiences that one can imagine, and then to have the courage, the will-power, and the determination to keep on living, and to keep fighting, not just for himself but for people he owes nothing and would probably be better off without – in the light of all that has happened to him since that tragic night of the fire and the simple, undeniable,  _humbling_  fact that he is still standing, largely sane and functional, and not shut up in an asylum somewhere, Derek’s fortitude is nothing less than herculean, and Stiles is helplessly drawn to it.

     A sharp noise brings Stiles out of his reverie. For a moment he is confused as to where the noise is coming from, but the insistent vibration near his leg, sudden and unsetting in his half-mindful state, reminds him that it is his phone. He fishes it out of his pocket and looks at the caller id.

     It’s Derek.

     Perplexed even more, he glances up at the man in front of him, who now has his phone pressed against his ear, and who motions him to answer the call.

     Stiles does.

     “Hey, Stiles,” he hears Derek say, both through the speaker and in person, “would you be interested in going on a date with me? It’s just occurred to me that I don’t actually dislike you. I might in fact like you a whole lot more than I ever thought possible. Funny how that works, huh? And there’s a tiny possibility that you might like me back. So, what say?”

     Stiles colours – so abruptly and violently that he feels dizzy. Unsure as to what to do, he wrenches his gaze away from Derek’s mesmeric eyes, looks up, down, and around, and everywhere, and bites his lips a little too hard, flinches, then flushes some more – all the while feeling himself tossed in a cornucopia of emotions (of the happiest kind) in which embarrassment reigns supreme. He can’t bear to look back at Derek, who is smiling an amused smile, he knows intuitively, but one that is all heart, and he feels utterly ill-at-ease to confront it directly.

     “Teeny,” he squeaks, breathless and weird, though he’d swear his lips are sealed shut.

     “Come again?” The laughter in Derek’s tone has never been more apparent.

     “Teeny,” he clarifies more firmly, keeping Derek resolutely out of his line of sight. It would undo him completely, otherwise; Stiles isn’t shy by any stretch of the imagination – he could honestly argue that he is easily the most shameless person he knows, to no opposition at all – but something about this particular scenario, the topic in discussion, and Derek’s almost  _gratified_  response to it is causing all sorts of turmoil in his head and heart. “I said ‘teeny’, as in ‘there’s a  _teeny_  tiny possibility that I might like you back’. You left out the ‘teeny’.”

     Derek, Stiles glimpses from the corner of his eye, shrugs.

     “Well?” says Stiles, after a full minute of absolute silence.

     “ ‘Well’ what?”

     “Well, now that we’ve established that I like you and you like me, isn’t there something you should be doing?”

     “There is? Well, colour me surprised.”

     Stiles narrowed his eyes resentfully. “You know what,  _dick_? I misspoke, something I find I’ve been doing a lot lately. There’s nothing we should be doing. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Now that we’ve established we like each other, we’ll just shake hands like two comrade in arms and go our separate ways and spend the rest of our lives living the kind of gut-wrenching misery which will out-misery the Misery with Kathy Bates. Thank you.”

     “Stiles,” says Derek, rather tenderly, drawing nearer.

     “Stiles has left the building.”

     “Stiles, come on. I’m kidding.”

     “Well, person whom I like and who likes me but who evidently thinks we shouldn’t be doing anything even though we like each other, all I want to say to you is kiss my miserable keister – ”

     Later, much, much later, narrating the story of How I Met Your Father And Uncle Derek to his kids, and Scott’s kids, and Lydia’s kids, on a cozy evening by a cheerful fire in the middle of a snow-shrouded, fairytale levels of magical November – Derek, Scott and Lydia pottering about the kitchen because they were losers and somebody had to cook for the five five-year olds and the four thirty-somethings (all bottomless pits made human), and Stiles, in his own words as an extremely mature, sensible and erudite teacher of middle school delinquents, was ‘outta here’ because ‘ain’t no Stiles gonna cook no food ‘cause y’alls disgusting, homies’ – Stiles would tell them the three  _‘Don’t Do’s Of Kissing In Romantic And/Or Sexual Relationships In The Latter Half Of The Twenty-First Century, Because Respect And Politeness And Shit_ : never kiss someone without their express consent, because that’s illegal and you could end up in jail, which will make Grampa very sad; never kiss someone out of the blue, no matter how deeply in love you think you are or how long you’ve been together, because it is wrong to presume; and lastly, but most importantly, never ever kiss someone while that someone is speaking to you, because that’s just bad manners, number one, and not a very effective means of silencing someone, number two, because that someone, being the very someone whom you think needs silencing by being kissed unawares, will subject you to such an excruciating, relentless, wanting-to-actually-tearing-your-hair-out level performance of his communicative gifts after said silence-by-kissing is concluded that you will wish you were never born,  _Derek_.

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> If anyone wants to continue and finish this, you have my permission and heartfelt blessings.


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